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American sign language and open source

Imagine when Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet traveled across the pond searching for methods to educate deaf children. Imagine if the Braidwood family in Scotland had been open about their methodology in educating deaf children. Imagine if Gallaudet had not traveled with Sicard to Paris. Things might be surely different today. While the former group happily celebrated their results, they kept how they achieved those results secret. The latter openly shared their ideas and methods, and because so, spread those ideas to another continent. That is, because one group operated in an “open source” fashion, they changed the course of history.